How to Make Change About People

#1 Learn to Engage with Your Employees

Learning to engage with your employees is key for people-centric change to enable high-performing work environments. Why? Because people are motivated to perform when they feel heard. Learn to have real conversations with employees, Fouad says. Ask them, Folks, what isn’t working?

People will express honest opinions if they feel safe. So make sure you’re providing psychologically safe spaces. Learn to listen. Refrain from penalizing those who express themselves and try to leave your own defensiveness at the door. As a leader, when you engage with your employees, you expose yourself. Asking for the truth, exposing yourself to criticism, isn’t easy, but it’s crucial to establishing strong relationships. By your willingness to expose yourself, you gain respect and motivate your employees. Fouad appeals to courage to overcome fears of engagement. Preparation and practice are useful ways to learn about how you behave and communicate.

Asking for the truth, isn’t easy, but it’s crucial to establishing strong relationships.

#2 Engage People to be Part of the Change

Engage with your employees and involve them in problem-solving processes, instead of feeding them a top-down solution. Use mindful communication to motivate your employees to work with you. “Let’s say you find that customer service must improve. If you go up to them and say, Look, we need to improve, you’re basically telling them that their work sucks and they need to do a better job.” This is highly demotivating and disengaging. “Imagine saying instead, Folks, this is what our competition is doing, and this is how we compare to the benchmarks. Do you think we can improve customer satisfaction?” Ask questions—include your people—to make them part of the process. And let them develop the change program with you.

Create Mindful Communities to Foster Engagement and Motivation

Further engage your employees and co-create solutions by creating a sense of community among those facing similar challenges. If managed well, communities can be systems of support. Giving people the chance to feel they’re improving together is extremely productive. At Agility, the community’s output gave branch managers a sense of belonging and fulfillment, which fostered their engagement and motivation.

The first step to problem-solving remains the same: Identify the problem. Before he became Director of Tender Management, Fouad had experienced firsthand a lack of collaboration during the tendering process. He knew that people critical to winning a tender, ranging from sales to operational teams, were stuck in silo-thinking, each team pursuing its own objectives. During every tender, they struggled to work together. After engaging with the branch managers, he realized the teams didn’t know each other. Although fighting similar struggles, each felt alone.

“Think of the relationship with your best friend. Why are you friends? Perhaps one of you was there for the other, or you faced challenges together. This connects and deepens your relationship.” The same applies to work relationships, Fouad says. A community creates those relationships where you deal with problem together.

Creating a community for regular exchange allowed the branch managers to work through problems together, to learn from each other, and to share best practice. “We are in this together”–we succeed together—reinforces motivation. Friendships developed. As a result of having a community, the board recognized the increase in overall performance. In return, the community felt appreciated and fulfilled.

“We are in this together” reinforces motivation

#3 Mindful Engagement for Self-Development and Learning Environments

Developing your people’s skills are important to high-performing work environments. How do you develop someone? Telling them to improve goes only so far. Cultivating learning environments through mindful engagement does produce intrinsic motivation to learn and self-develop, but isn’t intrinsic motivation each individual’s responsibility?

“Leaders, to a certain extent, are responsible for fostering engagement and inspiring people to reach beyond their comfort zone and develop themselves.” Inspiration and empowerment start with mindful engagements—empathizing with your employees and appealing to their needs. Fouad refers to people’s basic human needs as outlined by Tony Robbins (the need for certainty, variety, significance, belonging and connection, growth and improvement, and contribution). In a customer service case, Fouad made the effort to make self-development meaningful and exciting to employees. He linked their needs to the effort required to develop themselves. “To improve customer satisfaction, people needed to develop their communication skills. I took time to explain to them how developing their communication skills would enhance their daily interactions, improve the prospects of their careers, increase job security, and improve their personal relationships.” He engaged and encouraged employees to maintain their drive and excitement. “A simple Look at what we’ve done this week folks, good job! goes a long way,” Fouad says. Give people the space and time to develop and practice newly acquired skills to promote a sustainable learning environment.

Who’s Responsible for Nurturing Mindset and Energy?

When Fouad woke up in the hospital, he asked himself Why me? How did I get myself into this mess? “The truth is, I hadn’t prepared myself to be promoted: I hadn’t learned to take care of my mindset, to cultivate positivity and manage my energy.” Looking inward is where every change journey begins—by taking responsibility of our own well-being and development. Fouad started to journal, practice meditation and mindfulness, and embrace positivity. Once his energy levels were restored, and he put in the work to maintain them, he felt an urge to help others. After taking care of himself, he turned to helping Agility develop a high-performing workplace. The journey continues. He’s now building his own business helping other companies turn their work environments around.

I can’t wait to share my next conversation with you – speak soon,
Helena